Camila Cabello on Beyonce Loving her New Album & Her Dream to Make Britney Spears Giggle for NYLON Magazine

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In NYLON’s lastest issue, Cabello reflects on everything from her time with Fifth Harmony, to unfair comparisons to Charli XCX, and writing the alleged Sabrina Carpenter x Shawn Mendes inspired song “June Gloom.”

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On defying people’s expectations of her: “It was so much easier for people to put me into the box of ‘Havana,’…“I also listen to Lana and Playboi Carti and The 1975. That’s harder for you to understand. Maybe that’s why people were like, ‘I don’t get [C,XOXO].’ Maybe [the ‘Havana’] version of me was easier for you to digest, but that doesn’t mean that’s all of me.”

On the unfavorable comparisons to Charli XCX: “I said something like ‘elements of hyperpop’ [somewhere]…I hate that I said that, because people ran with this thing before the album was even out…She’s one of my favorite artists, you know?…I can tell that people saying this weren’t even listening to the music.”

On her love for Britney Spears: “All I wanna do in this lifetime is make Britney Spears giggle.”

On meeting Beyoncé saying she loved her album at Michael Rubin’s White Party: “Oh, f*ck, now I’m going to sound name-drop-y…But Beyoncé told me she loved my album, OK? That’s the gold star. And I walked away fully, like, tears brimming in my eyes. She’s somebody I’ve watched from my childhood. Her and Taylor saying nice things about the album really meant a lot to me.”

On exploring her own experience of Latinidad in C,XOXO: “As an immigrant, I don’t feel like I completely fit in with people that [grew] up in the United States. I always feel in this weird middle ground where nobody is ever going to fully understand me…[Being] from Miami, it does feel like its own nationality. It’s the only place that feels like home, and the only place that I feel like can take all of me. Miami’s the only place that understands all of us.”

On kicking producer Jasper Harris out of the studio while recording “June Gloom”: “I don’t want to be singing about feeling super horny, but then, like, this guy is right here [in the studio]…I wrote it so fast because to me, everything is so personal”

On working with JT and Yung Miami from City Girls on “Dade County Dreaming”: “We needed to do it for the city.”

On Spring Breakers inspiring the “Dade County Dreaming” music video: “When people think about Miami, they think it’s so fake and all party, kind of surface-level. It doesn’t feel real…The Florida that I grew up in is not that dark [compared to the film]…I like the power of the girls. There’s some part of me that always wanted to belong to a girl gang.”

On C,XOXO being a more “complicated” album: “Maybe it’s because I’ve always been such a good girl…Being in the industry made me build that harder shell and harder exterior. Like Rihanna, Beyoncé, Taylor — this kind of bravado happens in their later work. It’s building an armor. My previous albums were more clean-cut, like: ‘I’m so in love and happy, blah, blah, blah!’”

On looking back on her time with Fifth Harmony with compassion: “I think conflict resolution is really important, especially when it comes to a group. Those are skills you don’t have when you’re 16 years old. How do you deal with being left out? How do you deal with jealousy? How do you deal with these things without hurting yourself or other people?”

On C,XOXO as a tribute to her hometown: “I remember listening to Bad Bunny’s album Un Verano Sin Ti, which was so attached to Puerto Rico…I’m not from Puerto Rico, but it made me love where I’m from. And I like the contagiousness of that, of pride in where you’re from. I think Miami is the only place that I’ve ever felt like is my home.”

[Photo Credit: Ryan Saradjola/Nylon Magazine]

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